'Field of dreams' blossoms Port MacKenzie: diamond in the rough may turn out to be the newest jewel in SouthCentral's Tiara.

• Author: Resz, Heather A.
• Position: Marc Van Dongen

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Marc Van Dongen has been director of Port MacKenzie in the Mat-Su Borough since the 14-square-mile port district was nothing but a hand-drawn line on a borough map.

One of his first projects as port director was to carve a new 1.2-mile road from the end of Point MacKenzie Road, through the wilderness, to the water's edge.

By watercraft, it takes just minutes to cross the 1.5 miles of water that separate the Port of Anchorage from Port MacKenzie.

But in April 2000 when Van Dongen became port director, the "port" on the northwest shore was mostly an 8,940-acre "field of dreams."

"We've made tremendous progress in the past seven years," he said. "Everything you see out here we've done since then."

Besides that access road, now there's electric, water and phone service, a deep-draft dock, a barge dock, a ferry terminal building and three private businesses.

Van Dongen said it will take him six more years to finish his list of five goals:

* Natural gas line extension from Burma Road wellhead.

* Deep-draft dock completion.

* Upgrade and pave the last 14.4 miles of Point MacKenzie Road.

* Initiate ferry operations between Anchorage and Port MacKenzie.

* Complete a 43-mile rail line to the port from the Parks Highway.

TREMENDOUS POTENTIAL

The newly completed Mat-Su Borough Ferry System terminal is the first link in a ferry system that will provide transportation between Anchorage and the southeast corner of the neighboring Mat-Su Borough by 2009.

"There's tremendous potential for something big out here," Van Dongen said on a tour of the Port MacKenzie area Aug. 9. "If the Knik Arm Crossing is built, that's one of the keys. The other keys being the rail line and the gas line."

Since 2003, when the Alaska Statute 19.75.011 created the Knik Arm Bridge and Toll Authority, the Knik bridge project has had a question mark attached to its name.

After more than 20 years of talking about the idea, the time has come to erase the question mark, according to KABATA spokesperson Mary Ann Pease.

"Right now, we're looking at construction taking place between 2009 and 2010 and being operational by 2011," she said.

Legislators put a huge piece of the project puzzle in place in June 2006 when it passed House Bill 471, which gave KABATA the authority to enter into public/private partnerships.

The toll bridge will be the state of Alaska's first such public/private partnership, though such funding mechanisms are plentiful elsewhere, Pease said.

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